The invention described herein was made in the course of Contract No. EY-76-C-08-1183 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This invention relates to a communications system and more particularly to a highly versatile, highly portable emergency communication system which permits rapid deployment into the area of interest.
A number of emergency situations arise which necessitate the rapid deployment of a communication system. One type of such emergency situation involves searches for radioactive or other dangerous materials. Whether such dangerous materials have been lost or are the basis of terrorist or extortion plots, it is imperative to the public safety and tranquillity that the materials, if they do, in fact, exist, be found as soon as possible. Accordingly, a very rapid deployment of a comprehensive array of radiation measurement equipment and search teams of scientists and technicians to operate the equipment is generally required and this in turn necessitates the deployment of a portable, versatile communication system which will enable individual search teams or search team members to be in communication with each other and with the control center for the search operation.
The requirement for versatility in the communications system can be appreciated when it is realized that a variety of different search modes, such as by aircraft, land or water vehicles and on foot, will generally be employed in such an emergency, additional requirements such as unattended roadblock monitors and logistics personnel may be necessary, and there can, of course, be wide variation in the character, size, remoteness, etc., of the area that needs to be searched. Moreover, a particular scenario may require one or more redeployments of the individual elements of the search team and, therefore, of elements of the communication system before completion.
Several communication systems in the prior art have provided for the extension of the range and versatility of communication systems by the use of repeaters between transceivers of limited range and a base station. One such prior art system is that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,745,462 to Melvin Earl Trimble and U.S. Pat. No. 3,955,140 to Berton H. Stephens and Jack Bradley. The basic system shown in these two patents involves the connection of an extension unit to a conventional mobile transceiver such as is commonly used in police vehicles. The extension unit converts the mobile transceiver into a repeater through which a police officer can remain in radio communication with the base station while away from his vehicle with the use of a small handheld transceiver of limited range. The latter of the two patents is an improvement on the basic system which provides for automatically inhibiting multiple transmissions by units within range of one another and provides punch through priority communications from a transceiver to the base station.
While the communication systems of the Trimble and Stephens et al. patents are useful for their intended applications, they do not have sufficient versatility to provide satisfactory communication systems over the wide variety of situations that arise in an emergency search operation of the type herein contemplated.